tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 27 17:46:40 1996

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: KLBC: Message for a friend

~Doq writes:
>>>>HaqwI' bangDaj pegh HoD ghaH
>>"The captain's him/her keeps secret the surgeon's his beloved."
>>Or, "He/she is the captain of the surgeon's his secret love."

>Actually, the first one was closer. What my friend was asking me
>to translate was "The surgeon is the captain's secreat love" and
>vice versa.

See TKD section 6.3: pronouns can be used to mean "I am", "he is", etc.
When there is a definite subject, it follows the pronoun and takes the
"topic" suffix {-'e'}.

"The surgeon is [something]" is translated {[vay'] ghaH HaqwI''e'}.

Verbs acting adjectivally (TKD 4.4) follow the noun they are modifying, so
"secret love" is {bang pegh}.  Possession of one noun by another is shown
simply by placing the possessed noun "love" {bang} after the possesor noun
"captain" {HoD} (see TKD sections 3.3.4 and 3.4).  Put them together, and
"The captain's secret love" is {HoD bang pegh}.

The final sentences become:
{HoD bang pegh ghaH HaqwI''e'} and {HaqwI' bang pegh ghaH HoD'e'}.

These are still slightly ambiguous.  The {-'e'} on the subject clues us
in to the use of the pronoun as a "to be" verb, but {pegh} might still be
an adjectival verb or a noun.  We can interprete the first one as either
"The surgeon is the secret loved one of the captain" or "The surgeon is
the secret of the captain's loved one."  We live with this ambiguity.  In
a spoken phrase, pauses help disambiguate similar things in English; it's
possible to do the same in Klingon.

-- ghunchu'wI'               batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj

Back to archive top level